


The Paint Box

by OldPossum



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldPossum/pseuds/OldPossum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and Scorpius vs. family expectations, in a few quick sketches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Paint Box

“There’s you, and there’s me, and it doesn’t really matter what anyone says,” he’d told her once, seriously, thinking he was being romantic. Rose had laughed and told him that was utter bullshit.

“Of course it matters,” she’d said, and he was already painting her in his mind, flashing white teeth, red hair, brown eyes. “I wouldn’t be me without everyone else, and you wouldn’t be you without everyone else, and I don’t know about you but I like _you_ for _you_ , does that make sense?”

Scorpius had said no, but she was already pulling him in for a kiss that sent stars spinning across his eyes so it didn’t really matter. Later, when the stars had passed and he was lying in bed, he’d try to extract the words from the picture, but he found he couldn’t, and didn’t really want to. Red hair, white teeth, brown eyes, and that searing kiss, that was all he wanted to keep.

.

But it had mattered, because Rose loved her father and her father didn’t love him, and her tears weren’t what he wanted to paint. No blue, no green, no quiet, burdened white.

“You love art so much,” she murmured, “paint me somebody new. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be other people, you and I, just for a while?”

So he painted himself small and submissive, resigned and splattered against the canvas, so small that even Rose’s father could pretend not to see him, and he painted a story about how it made him happy, but his dreams played out in grayscale and there were no more stars in their kisses.

.

And some days, he felt she was painting him too, stenciling out the shape of his eyes and his mind and his life. He was tired of the colors, tired of red and white and brown. “No more,” he finally told her, because once he’d loved the colors, and now they were spoiled.

.

So he went back, painted himself back into his life, but found that now he dreamed of her in hues unimaginable: in cobalt, umber, and ultramarine, in ivory, in emerald green, in blue. Rose of the rainbow, Rose of the hurricane, Rose of the chromatic spectrum, and he loved the colors and loved her but felt small and weak. He was a blank page beside her.

.

“I’m sorry,” she said, standing before him, and he had painted her true. She was red, white, brown, but she was also crimson, bright purple. She almost burned.

“Me too,” he said.

“I asked you once to make us into different people,” she said, “do you remember?”

“Yes,” he said.

“That was wrong,” she said, moving forward, touching him, color spilling. “There’s me, and there’s you. That’s all that matters.”

.

They mixed a new color, a color for which they had no name, a color no one else knew. And Rose’s father raged, and Scorpius’ father groaned, and they painted, and sometimes, there were even stars.

**Author's Note:**

> i.e. they banged.
> 
> With apologies and gratitude to E. V. Rieu.


End file.
